Today marks 100 years since the martyr’s death of Rev. Fr. Mikhail Kritsky. He was buried at the Nikolsky skete of the Seraphim-Diveyevo monastery located in the village of Avtodeevo near the Church of the Life-Giving Trinity. Panikhida was served at his gravesite on his commemoration day.

Priest Mikhail Alexeevich Kritsky served at the altar of the Trinity Church in Avtodeevo for twenty years. He was born on November 4, 1879, in Poliany Village (Misyurikha) in Arzamas County of the Nizhny Novgorod Governorate. His grandfather, a church reader, and priest father each served at rural parishes of the Nizhny Novgorod Governorate.

A child of a struggling priest with a large family, Mikhail was entitled to study for free at the Nizhny Novgorod theological school at first and at a local seminary next. He was at the top of the class in the seminary graduating it first in class in 1900 and assigned the “Student” level awarded only to distinguished graduates. This award presented him with an opportunity to continue education at a Theological Academy or get a job of an instructor at diocesan theological schools, as well as serve at the 2^nd class city parish after ordination.

Upon the completion of the seminary course, Mikhail Kritsky married a pious and educated daughter of a priest, Nina Alexeevna Raeva. On October 29, 1900, Bishop Vladimir (Nikolsky) of Nizhny Novgorod and Arzamas ordained Mikhail a deacon followed with ordination as a priest and an assignment to serve at the Trinity Church in Avtodeevo of Ardatovo County.

Fr. Mikhail introduced the readings of the Gospel in Russian language with a subsequent explanation for his parish. The parishioners liked these reading so much that, no matter how long the evening services lasted, almost everyone stayed to listen to Fr. Mikhail.

He preached the Gospel not just with the word but with his life. When two local residents had a neighborly quarrel and one of the warring parties rejected all offers to make peace, Fr. Mikhail visited him and was ready to fall before him on his knees. That’s when the hard-hearted one relented and, holding Fr. Mikhail up, exclaimed: “Batiushka, you shouldn’t fall down on your knees, for I forgive him!”

After the revolution in 1917, Fr. Mikhail started acting like a Fool for Christ and revealed a gift of clairvoyance. On a Passion Week, Batiushka handed out colored eggs saying at this: “Eat them, eat!” When people retorted saying that it is still Lent, Fr. Mikhail replied: “The time is near when you would eat not only eggs but meat during Lent.” There were other wondrous things the priest from Avtodeevo was saying then. He prophesied that the villagers would be ticked off instead of getting paid, and, starving, would have to stand in line holding empty sacks waiting to get food at the food distribution barn.

In September of 1919, he was arrested for the first time. He was accused of tearing off Lenin and Trotsky’s posters at a village council room and for collecting alms to benefit the Diveyevo monastery. He explained it this way: “On September 18, I went to collect alms for the nuns of the Diveyevo monastery feeling responsible before God at the Last Judgment Day. When I was invited to the village council in Kudley village, I was outraged seeing no icons but the posters that ridicule the Orthodox faith, that is, the portraits of Lenin and Trotsky. So, I tore them off the wall.”

When he stayed at a jailhouse in Ardatov at the same time as a villager from Dubrovka, Fr. Mikhail advised that man: “Read Psalm “He that dwelleth in the help of the Most High” twelve times a day and you will be released.” “Batiushka, why aren’t you reading it?” “I want to suffer for Christ.”

Six weeks after his arrest, Fr. Mikhail was released but in February of 1920 he was arrested again, this time for founding a church school instead of a Soviet public school in Avtodeevo. On his way to jail, he ran away and, without any attempt to hide, came home and continued to serve at the Trinity Church. At the same time, he continued the commemoration of the Tsar and his family just as he did before revolution.

Fr. Mikhail was arrested one last time on December 19, 1920, in the end of the service at his church before a large gathering of locals. On March 31, 1921, during a transfer from one jail to another, a guard walking batiushka through the forest shot him dead not far from Pushley village.

The authorities wanted to bury Fr. Mikhail in Kulebaky, but the residents of Avtodeevo confronted and brought his remains for burial in their village.

People carried his coffin from a neighboring village to the Trinity Church in Avtodeevo by foot. Fr. Mikhail was buried on the feast of Annunciation on April 7, 1920. A gathering of faithful was so great they didn’t fit inside the churchyard.

When the coffin was lowered into the grave and topped with dirt, the authorities came aiming to destroy the plan to have a burial near the church but the people wouldn’t let them to get close to the grave.